Ama tu Cereal – Breakfast & Mamás Latinas

While I was at the Blogalicious conference, you may have seen me using the hashtag #amatucereal (love your cereal) on Twitter. Ironically the Blogalicious conference didn’t have cereal available for breakfast or else I would have been eating it.

Cereal is a staple at our house, and in most houses in the United States, for many reasons. For one, cereal is easy to prepare and many people don’t have the time or energy to cook a hot breakfast like frijoles molidos, tortillas, huevos revueltos, chorizo, platanos, etc. (though I do make that breakfast for the entire family on the weekend!)

You’ve heard breakfast is the most important meal of the day – and it’s true, so it’s good that we have cereal as an option to start the day. Not only is it fast, easy, affordable, and well-loved by even the pickiest niños – breakfast cereal with milk is the leading source of 10 nutrients important to growing bodies.

Here are some more interesting facts from a survey conducted by Kellogg’s:

Nutrition experts agree that breakfast in the morning helps children focus in the classroom.

9 in 10 Latina mothers want their kids to eat breakfast every day.

Latina mothers are 20% more likely than mothers overall to get up early and prepare breakfast.

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12 thoughts on “Ama tu Cereal – Breakfast & Mamás Latinas”

I believe those interesting facts. In our home, we eat cereal breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes even for dessert. We luhhhve cereal! There’s currently 8 boxes of it on top of our fridge. I could live off Frost Flakes with sliced platanos, if I had to. Come to think of it, there was always cereal in every family member’s house I’d visit when I was a kid.

And I kept reading that hashtag as “amateur cereal” and kept thinking, what’s so amateur about cereal? hehe

I love cereal, too, Trina. I tend to be anemic, (not enough iron in my blood), and cereal with a glass of orange juice, (vitamin C helps iron to be absorbed), really helps me out. We eat it any time of the day too. Cereal is one of the few things the kids know they can grab a handful of and eat any time they want without asking. (If I could just teach them to close the boxes though! Grrrr!)

Never had Frosted Flakes with sliced platanos! Is that your own invention or is that somewhat common? LOL.

I totally feel you on closing the boxes! Whenever I pick a box up and see it’s open, I’m afraid of a roach crawling out (fortunately, roaches aren’t common in our home, but we do live in an apt. complex so… ¡uno nunca sabe!).

My Mom gave me Frosted Flakes with sliced platanos when I was a kid. Apparently, it’s common in our family. You really ought to try it!

Tracy you mean you don’t put banana in your cereal?!!?!? jajaaja, I know we call banana in spanish banana, and platano are platains or more commonly platanos fritos…., but i think some call banana is spanish platano.

I hate to speak for Trina, but if its not banana I would def. try putting platano in my cereal… crudo o medio frito?

As for the word “platano” meaning banana – I know banana as banana, or “guineo” in Salvadoran slang. LOL. So this is what I was wondering too – if it’s a plantain, because uncooked plantain is icky … some diced or sliced platano frito might be interesting though.

We call bananas, platanos. It wasn’t until a few years ago I realized there were other platanos that you could cook, when I asked my Mom what they were called in Spanish, she simply replied ‘pues, platanos para cocinar’… I then took this question to the rest of my family and yeah, bananas are platanos. I guess los Monteregios can be a bit weird with Spanish? lol

Ezzy – I love cereal with marshmallows and stuff in it. LOL. Probably not the healthier choice among all the options — especially if you eat all the marshmallows out like some people I know! (My little sister used to do this and “ruin” the box of cereal for the rest of us. LOL.)

Unfortunately we don’t get to enjoy cereal as much as I would like to (very expensive and with the humidity right now if you dont eat it all in a day it is ruined) but my husband does eat platanos raw. So I could see him putting that on his cereal.

While we were in El Salvador, I noticed cereals are considered more of a luxury item by our lower income friends. We bought them some groceries while we were there, including a box of Corn Flakes. They were so excited because they usually eat tortillas and beans for breakfast.

So, your husband eats platanos raw? … What color is the peel when he’ll eat them like that? Yellow with spots or completely black?

I may be the one dissenter here. (Although I do LOVE cereal and grew up eating at least two bowls a day, one for breakfast, and one for a snack when I got home.) But a while ago, when we started trying to eat more whole foods, I decided to (gasp!) stop buying cereal. For breakfast, we’ll now eat, vanilla yogurt with blueberries or coconut, yogurt smoothies, eggs, cream of wheat, or oatmeal. I wondered if we’d have time in the morning, but it really doesn’t take that much longer, unless I make something like pancakes. I credit the cereal ban to me losing weight. Now, we’ll have cheerios for a treat every now and then…. and the kids (and I) love it.

Whole foods are obviously really good for you, Susan, so you should be really proud. Sounds like you and your kids are getting a healthy, balanced breakfast. We also have foods like these for breakfast sometimes. (Oatmeal with diced apple & sliced almonds is really nice on cold mornings!)

Something I like to do in the summer, when berries are in season, is to put chopped fresh strawberries and blueberries in a bowl with yogurt and then put a small handful of a cereal like Kashi GoLean on top – sort of like a parfait.

While I definitely have a weakness for sugary cereal like Choco Zucaritas, as I posted earlier – when I’m trying to get healthy again, I look for cereals with lower sugar, and higher protein and fiber. It’s all about trying to make the right choices for our families and doing our best to be healthy. It isn’t always easy!